The Heart Asks Pleasure First
by venusianeye
Summary: That was the nice thing, Kudou supposed, about being in love with a suicidally depressed shut-in.  When you spent your whole life running from the world, other people didn't have a chance to ruin you.


Itoshiki Nozomu was not an ideal lover, despite the popular opinion of the female student body. He was neurotic, and selfish, and genuinely suicidal at times - when he wasn't just looking for attention.

He also cried a lot during sex, Kudou had discovered. Usually, Itoshiki's wails, like the high-pitched whimpers of an underaged porn star, were a mixture of "no" and "please" and "don't" and "owww" and, of course, that old, worn-out whore of a phrase: "Please let me come." Kudou didn't let the hysteric antics of his teacher bother him. He knew, with bone-tired certainty, that Itoshiki wanted it - wanted it harder than Kudou gave it to him, in fact. Itoshiki embraced nothing with more passion than his own victimhood, and Kudou was depressingly aware that the frantic denials and the pathetic squealing were all unconscious attempts to entice him to more elaborate heights of sadism.

Kudou knew all of these things because he could read people's hearts and minds almost as easily as he could read books. This particular outlet for his talents had never occurred to him until Itoshiki had thrown a hysterical fit over the possibility of having his thoughts read, but once the idea had been introduced, Kudou discovered he was a natural, a mastermind. He knew people better than they knew themselves, discovered that he could control them to a degree that he found personally alarming. It was inconvenient for his relationship with Itoshiki-sensei, as well - because Itoshiki-sensei, like so many others, was completely clueless when it came to his own heart's desires.

It was probably frustrating on many levels for both of them, Kudou reflected. Itoshiki had no idea why he hadn't turned Kudou in to the authorities or accused him of rape or ever tried - seriously tried - to fend him off. As far as his pretty, stupid, obnoxious sensei was concerned, "no" meant "no", and Kudou was the only one who knew that it meant "help me". He didn't enjoy the situation; it left him feeling like a rapist every time they had sex. Really, Kudou knew perfectly well that the right thing to do, what a decent person would have done at the very first panicked "Stop!", was simply to cease indulging Itoshiki's masochism.

Alas, life was rarely that simple: much to his own chagrin, Kudou was in love with his absentee teacher. How could you look your beloved in the eyes - read what he wanted, what he needed and craved, written right there for Kudou to see - and possibly hope to abstain?

Today Itoshiki hadn't shown up for class, and Chie-sensei was busy conducting physical examinations, so while the rest of the students in class 2-A enjoyed a dubiously lengthy free study period - Chiri-chan was nearly apoplectic with rage - Kudou had set out to search in the usual locations. Itoshiki wasn't near the gas line, or trying to strangle himself on the gymnastic equipment, and he wasn't trying to break into the chemistry labs - and Kudou knew for a fact that all of the Home Economics classrooms were being used.

No, today Itoshiki was curled up in the shadow of an equipment shed on the roof, his skin almost bluish-white in the shade. Kudou could tell, without really knowing how he came by the knowledge, that Itoshiki was having a fit - it simply fit very neatly into the story of how Itoshiki functioned, the story that composed his sordid life, and so it was true by default. That was another unsurmountable chasm between Kudou and the rest of the world - Kudou was capable of stepping outside of the plot of his own story, but as far as he had observed, all other people could not. It made them all so very, very predictable.

"You can't get away with showing up for attendance and then skipping class, you know," Kudou told him, sitting across from him and memorizing, with a certain weary fondness, how Itoshiki flinched with surprise. "You're the teacher, not a delinquent."

"K-Kudou-kun," his teacher said, his eyes red, his knuckles white, his hair an unruly mop. He looked like a caged, unhappy animal, waiting to be kicked. He was a mess - Kudou had found that attractive, at first, to see him in such disarray, but now it struck him as pitiful. "Why are you here? Shouldn't you be going to class?"

Kudou felt a vein in his face twitch. "Like I said, you're the teacher. There's no class if you aren't there. What's the problem today, anyway?"

"Vestigial organs have left me in despair," Itoshiki mumbled, staring with morbid fascination at his own folded legs. His voice was too fast, his movements too jittery; Kudou settled in for the rant he knew was coming.

"A vestigial organ is an organ in the body that no longer serves any purpose, like your appendix, or your tonsils - maybe all of the other organs became more efficient, or perhaps the environment changed, but whatever the reason, a vestigial organ is obsolete - it just sits there, sucking up nutrients from the blood and making a nuisance of itself -

"Japanese society is filled with vestigial people," Itoshiki continued, a manic gleam in his eyes. "It's sad, Kudou-kun."

"Vestigial people," Kudou repeated, and his teacher nodded so vigorously his glasses slipped.

"Appliance repairmen for gadgets that no longer exist! Doomsday evangelists who continue to recruit, months after the date of the apocalypse has passed! Women whose husbands develop a late, fatal interest in OOOO dolls! Amputee war veterans! The Emperor!"

"Those last two are a little -"

"They all performed their duties well. They did their best, but they're still vestigial, and Japan would like nothing more than to have its vestigial people surgically removed! They take up resources that could've gone to useful people - people like cancer researchers, child prodigies, struggling manga artists," Itoshiki said, his teeth clenched. "If it weren't for them -"

"Aren't you a vestigial person yourself, though?" Kudou offered, faintly bored by his own inevitable role in the conversation. "Frankly, the internet has teachers beat."

Itoshiki paused for three long, numb seconds, and then let out a wordless, high-pitched noise of pain. "You're right. Oh, God. I'm nothing but an imposition," Itoshiki babbled. "I'm going nowhere in life, I'm never going to go anywhere in life - you're still young, you know, you're not a vestigial person yet. You shouldn't follow my example. Social evolution has passed me by - I should just jump off the roof right now and save everyone the trouble -"

Kudou physically restrained him from climbing over the fence as he continued to rave, and sat him back down with a little more force than was necessary, trying to jar him out of his downward spiral. He was glad that Itoshiki had had this particular episode away from the rest of the class - they tended to exacerbate the hysteria. "Your science is a few years out of date," he told him.

" - probably a liver or something - What are you talking about?" his teacher mumbled, his face a rictus of grief.

"Most of the so-called 'vestigial' organs have adapted over time to fulfill new functions," Kudou said, patiently, in the same relaxed tone of voice he used for story-telling. He dabbled in nonfiction, too, at times, especially if it was well-written. "They're members of the lymph system now. They're a vital part of the immune response, and the other organs rely on them when they're threatened by infection."

"Really?" Itoshiki asked, his eyes still painfully red, his toes curling spasmodically. Kudou realized that he had probably taken off his shoes in an effort to be conscientious; if he jumped while wearing them, it was likely that they would fly off his feet and land somewhere inconvenient. "So... so you're trying to tell me that vestigial people have an undiscovered purpose?"

"That's more along the lines of something Kafuka-chan would say, but ... sure," Kudou said, and offered Itoshiki a tissue to blow his nose on. He'd taken to carrying around a packet of tissues with him fairly early on in his clandestine relationship with his teacher - the conveniently sized packets that were intended to fit easily into a woman's handbag. It was one of the many minor annoyances associated with being Itoshiki's lover.

"Thank you, Kudou-kun," Itoshiki said after a few minutes of silence. "I feel a little better, now. You can just leave."

"Are you going to come to class?"

"... Don't feel like it," Itoshiki mumbled, his posture slumping.

So the fit had been triggered by some other issue, then. Kudou combed his mind for minor details of Itoshiki's story, a plot point that could explain his deeper-than-usual malaise. Before he could hazard a guess, though, Itoshiki spoke, answering the unspoken question himself.

"Did you know? Once I went for three months without leaving my home at all," he said, his eyelashes fluttering damply against his white, white skin. "I didn't speak. I didn't hum. I didn't even use my computer, or read any of my mail, or take out the trash. I thought that if I cut myself off from everything, eventually someone would come for me. Maybe a bill collector, maybe a door-to-door salesman - maybe just a phone call from a telemarketer. I thought that if I waited long enough, someone would notice that I wasn't putting out my garbage or paying for the utilities, and society would try to pull me back in."

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened," Itoshiki said, oddly blank, devoid of his usual Stürm und Drang. "Nobody noticed at all. I just ran out of food, so I stepped outside again - I had to tell the gas and electricity people that I hadn't paid, and they were surprised. No one," he repeated, with a dreadful emphasis, "had noticed a single thing missing."

"Why think about that now, though?" Kudou asked, although he could guess.

"Majiru-kun's parents called last night," Itoshiki said, a distant expression on his face, his voice oddly light. "To check up on him. Apparently Komori-chan has been faithfully sending them his progress reports." He paused, and sighed, rubbing at his bony wrists. He was no longer energetic in his depression - simply tired. "Apparently, the family house's phone number was changed last year."

"Do you ever call them?" Kudou asked.

"Once a week, when I can," Itoshiki said, listlessly, staring at the bruised blue of the sky. "They don't have an answering machine, so I thought they just... weren't picking up."

Kudou was in love with the suicidal idiot, so his heart was a little bit moved - he still thought it was a stupid thing to cry about. "Poor you," he said, staring intently into Itoshiki's eyes, reading him like a familiar novel.

He wondered what it would be like to take Itoshiki here, on the roof, under the empty blue sky - the rough concrete would leave scrapes all over Itoshiki's fragile skin, but no one would ever see those wounds. It would be like pinning a bird to a corkboard, or a butterfly or an insect, or some other creature that couldn't help trying to fly from rooftops.

It was tempting. Abiru-chan would never notice the absence of a single bottle of rubbing alcohol, two rolls of bandages.

Instead he offered Itoshiki a frugally small smile, and caught his restless hands.

"I'll come over tonight, sensei," he said.

"Majiru will be there," Itoshiki fired back, his shoulders shaking.

"How nice," Kudou said, deliberately tightening his grip. "I can tell him bedtime stories."

"I don't want to... disturb the neighbors," Itoshiki added, his pulse fluttering beneath Kudou's thumbs.

"Whyever would your neighbors be disturbed by bedtime stories?" Kudou said, enjoying the way that Itoshiki alternated between blushing and going pale, and then he relented. "If you can't keep quiet, I'll gag you, so don't worry about it."

"Y-you'll... ?" Itoshiki went as red as a clueless virgin on her wedding night, and the guileless way he bit his lip while he imagined being gagged and fucked was enthralling. That was the nice thing, Kudou supposed, about being in love with a suicidally depressed shut-in. When you spent your whole life running from the world, other people didn't have a chance to ruin you. Itoshiki was well-read, and cynical, and jaded, but he was also painfully naive, and his interactions with the real world left him in a state of perpetual, frequently unhappy, surprise. In short: he was Kudou's to spoil.

"Let's go to class, sensei," Kudou suggested. Itoshiki dithered for a few moments, but Kudou knew he would eventually give in and do his job - it was how Itoshiki's story went. Grudging surrender was a motif.

It occurred to Kudou, later that night, that he, Kudou Jun, had never wanted to create a story before. He was a reader, not a writer, but the idea of tampering with stories, bending lives and events to his own will, was oddly appealing.

"If I wrote you a story, would you read it?" he mused aloud, snaking his fingers through Itoshiki's hair and yanking his head back. Itoshiki made a few whimpering noises of confusion through the gag in his mouth, eyes unfocused, and Kudou decided that, had he been coherent enough to understand the question, he would've said yes.

"Okay, then," he promised, resuming his earlier ministrations and watching Itoshiki's eyes roll back. "I'll write something you'll like."

Perhaps, Kudou thought, if he proved to be as gifted a writer as he was a reader - if he could just edit some fundamental axiom of the world that kept everyone trapped in their little stories - maybe then he could set Itoshiki free. It was unlikely, but if Kudou could step outside the lines, surely he could take just one person with him.


End file.
